And the whole world has to answer right now

[venta]

A variable morning, so far. As soon as I arrived in work I was offered an apple-based pastry. Well, jointly offered with onebyone, so I had to share it, but half a pastry is better than no bread.

Things went downhill then, though, when I realised there was no Marmite in the kitchen. My toast remained resolutely non-evil. There wasn't even any marmelade. I had to put blackcurrant jam on my toast. Furthermore, ach made a truly (and uncharacteristically) nasty pot of tea, which further detracted from my breakfast experience.

Life has improved slightly since then, though. Pot of tea II (made by me) is much better, and I've just been brought a chocolate cookie from the biscuit tin upstairs.

OK, now I've updated you on my comestibles for the morning, on to the real issue:

Michael Jackson's on trial for sex offences against children at present. If you don't know that, er, well done for being even more oblivious to the news than I usually am.

Although actually, now I come to think of it, Radio 2 news managed to avoid mentioning it at all this morning, even in their newspaper-roundup. Good for them. Though I did have to hear quite a lot about the state of the M20, and Kent in general.

However, Jackson's been doing quite a good job of getting in the news at present. The coverage I've heard so far has been suggesting that things look a little bleak for him. If he is guilty (or, more accurately, if he is convicted), then paedophiliac crimes are something which that wise animal, The Public, tends to find very hard to forgive.

So far, radio stations that I've caught have mostly been taking the piss out of the case, and out of Jackson (not difficult), but not really coming down strongly on one side or the other. I want to know if radio stations are still playing his records - can anyone report any hearings of Jackson records in the wild since the case started ?

I guess, in theory, we've already had this dilemma with Gary Glitter[*], but I'm not sure I spent much time listening to stations which played Glitter Band records anyway. In fact, I'm not even sure I'd recognise any.

I remember someone commenting that they were surprised, given the controversy, that end-of-year figures last year showed that Jackson's music was selling well. I think it was either one of the earlier albums that featured high in the chart, or a best-of. I had a theory to account for this, which I believe everyone else dismissed:

Michael Jackson is, in my mind, two people. There is the artist of the 80s, who presented us with albums like Bad and Thriller and danced like a demon. A little odd, certainly, but harmless and entertaining and the purveyor of fine pop.

Then there is the current Jackson, who's veered from eccentric into lunatic. He's a living caricature of himself, made a plastic doll by surgery and a monster by the tabloids. At some point (in my mind, around the time of Black and White) his music vanished off into the leftfield and hasn't been seen in Credibility Street since.

I simply don't connect the two. If someone suggested I ought to boycott Jackson's music on moral grounds because of the current furore, I'd probably feel quite happy buying a copy of Off The Wall. To me, they're just not the same person. Is this dichotomy peculiar to me, or do other people share it ?

[*] "he's a bad, bad man"

Comments

[lanfykins.livejournal.com]

I will confess to some quite serious curiosity about this operation that's shutting down parts of the M20...

[bateleur.livejournal.com]

I tend to feel sanity's somewhat overhyped anyway.

Yes, I think Jackson's quite probably a nutter, but so are many people - and particularly interesting people - to some extent.

I wouldn't boycott his music under any circumstances (except that I had no plans to buy any in the first place) because I don't like the way that everything has to have consequence and context now. If I buy a CD it's because I'm hoping I might like the music on it. That's all.

[onebyone.livejournal.com]

As it happens, I bought a copy of Off The Wall a few weeks ago. That was while they were still buried in the mess of jury selection (apparently a lot of the potential jurors responded that they had read "some" or "a lot" of coverage of the case in the media. No shit.)

I agree with you that Jackson has changed over the years, but I don't see the same dichotomy you do. If nothing else, the person who is getting the royalties for my CD purchase is the same person on trial. The only reason I might boycott his music on ethical grounds is if I felt that it would be helpful for him to not receive the cash.

I don't think I've ever intentionally avoided an artist on ethical grounds, unless you count All Saints cover of Under the Bridge as a crime against humanity. This is partly because I don't see the point, but also because it's not really practical - A number of male artists have infamously treated the women in their lives very badly, so if I did have such a boycott then I'd probably have to include them, and it would be a royal pain to have to research every artist's personal background before deciding whether or not to buy an album.

[shrydar.livejournal.com]

First things first - why on earth are you even attempting Marmite when Vegemite is actually not that hard to come by in the United Kingdom? Marmite has far too much sugar, which really should only be found in tea, chocolate and on weetbix.

Back to the case in point. Despite liking black & white a lot better than Bad (the album, not the single, which was good), I probably see the same dichotomy as you. I see onebyone's point about giving him money though, so I'm somewhat confused now :)

antipodean C.

[waistcoatmark.livejournal.com]

Buying an older album would
a) give money to the current person
b) possibly encourage him to make more music. It's more debatable whether this would encourage him to make more music in his current style or whether it would persuade him to go back to his older style of music (for instance he may not see any difference in quality between his older stuff and the more modern crap).

Whether those are enough reasons not to buy his music is left as an exercise for the reader.

[smiorgan.livejournal.com]

Buy the decent Jackson albums secondhand and avoid sending a load of royalties to someone you don't approve of whilst enjoying his stuff whilst he was still good.

[smiorgan.livejournal.com]

Compare black disco dancin' Jackson of Off the Wall and white looney baby-dangling Jackson of today and they do look like completely different people. But then I recall the whole transitional phase - Jackson has just been getting steadily more barking as he got older (oxygen tent - plastic surgery - chimp shagger). For that reason there's a clear transition between the two.

Unfortunately his music hasn't gotten better as a result of being eccentric, but worse as a result of being rich.

Compare him to Bowie - Jackson has changed as a person, Bowie reinvented himself countless times but he still seems to be the same person (going by interviews past and present).

[secondhand-rick.livejournal.com]

I rather hope he is guilty. It would be truly horrible for someone as caring and innocent as he portrays himself to be to have to go through all this. Again.

[beckyc.livejournal.com]

I'm not entirely convinced that he* knows he's done something wrong (if, indeed he has). OK, so in my world, having young boys sleep in your bed is Rather Stupid on common sense grounds, but then plenty of people let their own kids sleep in their beds with them. And when you read about holiday snaps containing naked kids being allegegly paedophillic porn or when parents getting into trouble for sharing baths with their kids, then I do start to lose respect in the law in this area.

*And I can't believe for a moment that his staff wouldn't realise some things are stupid, a bad idea, and so on. And you would have thought that someone would have the moral conviction to say "No job isn't worth covering up and aiding and abetting a paedophile in procuring young boys".

[secretrebel.livejournal.com]

Michael Jackson's career definitely falls into several discrete periods/personas. I remember when I discovered that he'd been professionally recording as a child and double-taking that the singer on the cover of 'Bad' was the same person as the little boy who recorded with Motown. He's been famous since the age of eleven, legendary since his twenties, and notorious since his thirties. He's a cultural icon while still alive and now in his forties he's well on his way to becoming infamous.

A legacy of my teenage Michael Jackson obsession is almost encyclopedic knowledge of the peculiar psychology that has brought him to this point. It's a sad story, a twisted version of the Peter Pan fable that holds particular meaning for him, and has resulted in a stunted and potentially warped sexuality, an classic case of body dismorphic disorder, almost entire emotional isolation, and an increasingly slippery hold on reality.

It's sad. As secondhand_rick mentions, Jackson is living his very own personal nightmare right now, accused of a crime that, if convicted, will destroy his career and his psyche. (And probably end his life - I see no likelihood of him serving jail time, he'd kill himself first.)

He's probably shafted career-wise anyway, from what I've heard debts are mounting and his running costs are fairly huge. For years the money was pouring in and it was assumed it always would but his record company are fairly sick of him now. I've heard Sony are demanding money back and putting much less into promoting him. And his music has become steadily less and less popular as the number of self-serving ballads increased, the production quality dropped and every track became subsumed by verbal ticks and tricks. (I have heard his music being played recently but generally Thriller/Bad era tracks.)

Over the last ten years Jackson=paedophile jokes have become more and more common. Even Terry Wogan makes them, which is rather a death knell for him ever escaping this taint. He'd hoped to rehabilitate his image with the Bashir interview that led to this current court case.

I suspect the older music is all the music there's ever going to be. I'd bet money Jackson won't record again.

[ar-gemlad.livejournal.com]

Ooh, heard a Michael Jackson song just now on streaming radio (CLUB 977 The 80s Channel, if you must know!).

Interestingly, it was Pretty Young Thing, which has the lyrics "I want to love you, pretty young thing."

Hmm...